How effective is "Reverse the PIN" solution?

I have heard about cases in which the person is forced by a robber to withdraw cash from ATM machine. To summon the Police, the PIN number should be typed in reverse. The ATM gives the cash, however, and also inform the Police simultaneously. The ATM dispatches the cash not to tempt the robber to kill the person. Some of my friends raised an issue how to tackle with palindrome PINs. This is a good thought, in fact. I recommend that instead of avoiding palindrome PINs in usage, we need to come-up with alternative solutions for the prevailing problem. In this article, I have listed few solutions which, I feel, is very practical to realize.

1. The threatened person while typing the PIN has to enter an extra digit at the end, for eg. #9. It has to be typed very quickly so that robber cannot recognize it. To make this solution more effective, there should be variable length PIN numbers permitted to exist in usage.

2. This solution is about typing speed. It's observed recently that typing speed is unique to a person. Accounting this info, I suggest that during odd situations, the person has to change the typing speed, which will indicate the police that there is an abnormality.

3. We could have an ATM Location Code (ALC) written somewhere on the screen. The PIN number has to be entered prefixing/suffixing the ALC. The PIN number with ALC indicates a threat. Of course, it's required to type it unnoticeably fast.

4. There should be vigilant cameras in the ATM center intelligent enough to discover the odd face feelings/patterns indicating the threatened posture of the person. To paraphrase, the camera software should be able to figure out anomalies. Once confirmed, the police will be alarmed.

Many a times such odd situations occur at nights. The sensitive levels of some of the above proposed solutions could be increased during nights to detect such odd behaviors more effectively.

Healthy Foods

Often people make choices of what to and not to eat. Sometimes, we are confused which types of food will better suit us considering our age and health status. Recent research on various food items, we consume daily, suggests that not all regular foods will be beneficial at all times. This article highlights the pros and cons of certain easily accessible foods on the health of a individual.

Chocolate: Recently scientists have tom-tommed the benefits of chocolates, esp dark chocolate, due to rich in antioxidants, which helps thinning the blood and protecting the heart from clogging. Heart clogging is one of the main causes of heart-attack. Little dark chocolate is as beneficial as aspirin in thinning the blood. Moreover, Cocoa, ingredient of dark chocolate, has impacting antioxidant properties that fight against free-radicals, which helps us to look and feel younger. However, high consumption of dark chocolate results some disadvantages that outweigh the advantages. Chocolate contains high amounts of sugar, saturated fat and cholesterol which has devastating effect on the health. Some of the disadvantages include the risk of developing non-insulin dependent diabetics, mellitus and obesity.

Milk: Milk, which is a natural source of Vitamin D, has been traditionally accepted as a complete food that provides energy and prevents many diseases. However, the adults are exempted from daily need of milk, because it's consumption can indirectly cause osteoporosis. Milk and its products, sugar, wheat, refined/processed foods produce acids that impact the alkaline (base) proportion of the body. For a healthy individual, the ratio of alkaline to acidic medium should be high. Acids in our body require minerals like sodium and calcium to neutralize, which leads to osteoporosis.

Eggs: Japan has the highest rate of egg consumption in the world. They have lowest incidence of heart disease. Eggs are rich source of Vitamins A, D, E, B and minerals like Iron, Zinc, Phosphorus, and Iodine, essential for healthy teeth and bones. It's preferred to eat egg white avoiding the yolk, which is high in cholesterol. Egg white is low in saturated fat and is a healthy fast food. Adults are not required to eat egg as they don't need protein because they grow slowly. Egg is an acidic food and huge bowl of salad can counterbalance (or neutralize) it.

Nuts: Nuts are brain food and are rich in vitamins. Nuts -- like Almonds, Walnuts, and Cashew nuts -- are rich sources of mono unsaturated fatty acids ( Omega 3 fatty acids, also called good fats ) and protein. Omega 3 fatty acids are good for children during their brain development, because it accelerates the synaptic network connections in the brain. Other natural sources of Omega 3 fatty acids are fish oils and flax seeds. There is an other essential fatty acid called Omega 6, which when consumed excessively leads to depression and prostrate cancer. Moreover, large doses of Omega 6 hampers the absorption of Omega 3 in our body.

To reduce the bad cholesterol in the body, it's advisable to eat almonds. Although their calorie content is high, it's recommended to snack on nuts rather on junk food. This way you can get good out of calories.

Tea/Coffee: Drinking tea in moderation is good for health. Especially, black tea improves the functions of artery walls, and its antioxidants prevent cancers of stomach and oesophagus. They also inhibit the chemical reactions that take place during the development of heart disease. Antioxidants neutralize the free radicals, which damage healthy cells, if not controlled. Green tea is best tea to consume.
However, Tea comes with caffeine and tannin which impair the digestion process. Though caffeine is good at increasing the alertness and quickness of response, in large doses it can produce jitters, anxiety and insomnia.

Wine: Moderate consumption of red wine reduces the risk of strokes and lung cancer. The component, resveratrol, in red wine not only reduce the obesity in mice and make them live longer, but now has been observed to increase their endurance. However, wine retards the digestion process and hampers your motor responses.

Olive oil: It's the best oil because it abounds in mono saturated fatty acids and antioxidants. Olive oil when consumed raw promotes bone development and helps prevent colon and breast cancer and Alzheimer's and other diseases.

References: Most of the stuff mentioned here is from Hindustan Times, Brunch Sunday magazine.

Are we mentally disordered?

The “Rain Man” movie I saw recently gave a ray of curiosity on the peculiar psychological behavior exhibited by a character in that movie. This motivated me to investigate further into various psychological behaviors. In this article, I briefly outline my investigations and findings in this area.

Generally, society consists of individuals ranging from Autistic Savants to Associative types. Normally, individuals at the extreme psychological characteristics are very rare, and are ignored mostly. However, such peculiar behaviors are worth spotting because of their amazing mental capabilities. This article is specifically about them.

Autistic savants have peculiar mental disorder with extraordinary mental capabilities not found in common people. People showing extreme autism are considered as idiots/mad; they don't behave normally like most people do. They, in fact, are highly focused with tunnel vision on the events. That gives them an edge to have great photographic memory (can count the bunch of fallen match sticks in a glance). They can remember names of all the people they met, long string of numbers, random shuffled deck of cards, and also complex musical patterns. They can recall the things as fast as they remember them. Some savants have impressive mathematical abilities: multiplying 250 digit number and 157 digit number in few seconds and can perform many more complex arithmetic operations. However, possessing such abnormal talents bound to have lot of pressure from the society, as they are made to perform aggressively with their skills . Those incapable of dealing with it may fade away soon mostly by suicidal attempts. Finally, autistic people perform poorly in other aspects of life. And, they may not fare well in the areas where the normal behavior will suffice.

Those people fall between autism and normal band show exceptional talents/skills in one area and mediocre in other areas - e.g. Mozart (Musical genius). Society honors such people as they live normally and simultaneously perform exceptionally well in the area they are very much into. Recent research shows that savant skills can be temporarily acquired in a normal individual by disrupting left-front part of the brain – using magnetic stimulation.

On the other hand, extreme associative types perform complex associations of events which normal people feel difficult to think or even imagine about. They are considered as very creative as they develop great things motivated from a completely different thing one had never imagined before. For example: James watt built a steam engine by observing the lid flapping on a tea kettle. Einstein is a famous example of Associative type. One could find many such historic innovations happened by associating two different areas. Anything beyond creativity is mad. Some mad people do a random talk, though they are logical in their association of thoughts, normal people find it illogical. They some times frustrate people by change topics frequently during discussion. This is due to the fact that their brains have lot of associations than required. And every small incident may trigger multiple areas in their brain.

Many of us fall in some slice of the mental behavioral band. Anything abnormal is considered as a mental disorder. This might be due to the environmental factors we brought-up in. And also due to our diet nutritional content, parental care etc. Moreover, some of the psychological disorders occurred due to improper cell mutations during our birth process may influence the behavior of an individual's life. Each person is biologically different from others, and lives in his own illusion and perspective of the world. Perhaps, he is right in it! Each one of us has some mental disorderliness with a degree of variation from normal -- some are exceptionally good and some are tragically bad.

Finally, I would like to highlight few more points. Many of us might have heard about small kids (< 5 yrs) performing calendar arithmetic (What day of the week was Mar 29, 1981?). My question is: why such kids don’t become great executives, businessmen, or researchers later? The pity thing, many of us ignore, is such kids can only do calendar arithmetic! They are Autistic Savants. Parents failing to recognize this create misfortune to the kid. Secondly, our great human computer Shakuntala Devi can never become like a great mathematician Ramanujan. She can only perform fast arithmetic, unlike Ramanujan, who can build great theories over numbers.

Hope my article broadens the people’s thinking about great performers and non-performers in the world.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to my colleague for providing me useful insights.